The Woman in the Wedding Photograph
Chapter 04 - The Woman in the Wedding Photograph
Emma's discharge came with instructions to rest, attend follow-up appointments, and return immediately if concerning symptoms developed. She did not ask to go back to the Moretti mansion. She asked Daniel to take her to a modest apartment above a laundromat in Pilsen, where she'd lived before accepting the estate position.
Adrian offered to pay her medical bills. She accepted reimbursement for costs connected to what had happened at the house but refused the enormous check his accountant prepared.
"You didn't buy the right to my story," she told him.
He was ashamed to discover that he had instinctively tried to solve an emotional injury with money.
Emma's apartment had two rooms, mismatched chairs, and a crib in a cardboard box waiting to be assembled. A photograph of her grandmother stood on the windowsill. Above the sink hung a yellow calendar marked with prenatal visits.
"Your baby's father?" Adrian asked after she mentioned a complicated breakup.
Emma considered how much to say. "His name is Aaron Pierce. We were together three years. He left when I told him I was pregnant. He said he wasn't ready. I don't need a story about him becoming a hero. I need him to pay the support he's legally responsible for and leave me in peace otherwise."
Adrian nodded. "Understood."
She watched him closely. "Your wife wasn't perfect, you know."
He smiled despite himself. "I remember."
"She worried too much. Hid things. Tried to protect everyone, even when it made matters worse. But she loved you."
Emma brought out her phone and showed him old pictures: Rose cooking pasta in a tiny kitchen, Rose laughing in a winter coat, Rose and Emma pressing their foreheads together at a street festival. It was a version of his wife he had never known, young and ordinary and free from the social weight of his name.
"She told me that when you weren't being terrifying, you were shy," Emma said.
Adrian let out an astonished laugh. "That sounds like her."
Then Emma showed him a photograph taken weeks before Rose died. Rose was seated beside a woman with braided gray hair wearing hospital scrubs. Both were smiling, but Rose's hand rested protectively on her belly.
"That's Miriam," Emma said. "Rose sent it without a surname."
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Daniel's investigators identified her by the hospital badge: Miriam Alvarez, a former neonatal nurse who had moved to a small town in Wisconsin.
For the first time in days, Adrian felt the search narrowing from shadows toward an actual door someone might open.
